of a psychopath insomniac

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Phantom Spiders

I have never been one to be dramatically afraid of bugs of any kind. Maybe a little startled, but nothing a quick squish with a flip flop couldn’t handle. Here recently I’ve been a little on edge. With all three fur-ball pets we have shedding like it’s their job, there is stray hair floating around everywhere. Every time it hits me, I jump, completely convinced it’s a spider. I have decided to call these little outbursts of anxiety “phantom spiders.” So, like I said, I’ve always been fairly self-sufficient when it came to pest control, What gives? Well, all of those “care free” acts of spider squishing changed just a couple summers ago.

I had been swimming a lot and carelessly left my jeans in a corner of my bed room over a period of a couple days. I was living with my sister at the time. Her house was very clean and, despite living in a heavily wooded area, bugs and spiders were rarely found inside. I came in one day and after showering, I spotted my jeans and put them on. I wasn’t thinking much about it, I knew I hadn’t worn them more than a couple hours previously and didn’t see the point in getting a new pair out of the dresser. I felt a little pinch on my leg as I pulled them up and shook my leg until the damn thing came out. An ugly-looking brown spider. GROSS! I slipped on a flip flop, smashed it and disposed of it. No worries, I have been bitten, stung, pinched..etc. by pretty much anything and everything native to Indiana. I don’t know if it’s my blood type (A-) or if I just have a different smell to those stupid critters, but they can’t resist. It never fails, every summer I’m covered head to toe in mosquito bites, spider bites, ticks.. you name it I’m scratching at the inflamed, red bump it left behind. Even my husband’s ball python, That thing never bit ANYONE, until it met me… she bit me 5 times.

Anyway, back to that pesky little spider…

So, it had been probably a couple hours since it had bitten me, I was visiting a friend when the fever hit. The bite hurt, just like most spider bites, but this felt more like a bee sting. I decided to go home and take some Tylenol. I used the restroom and when I pulled up my pants I took a look at the bite on the inside of my thigh. it was HUGE! A big swollen blister and boy did it look infected! I screamed for my sister who insisted it was some kind of STD. Gotta love big sisters…

long story short, the next morning the blister had transformed into a hole in my leg, and after a couple weeks of violent vomiting, some antibiotics and fever reducer it healed up just fine…

Thanks to that damn spider, I am petrified of them now. I have found probably a dozen spiders or so in my house already and it’s not even summer yet! Every spec of dust, stray hair or string makes me jump. These phantom spiders have it out for me man… maybe it’s the ghosts of all the spiders I’ve killed in the past… If that’s the case, that damn brown recluse just might come back and finish the job!